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“Your brain had other priorities.”

“No room.”

“I know.”

His words were becoming harder to understand.

“We’ll make room together.”

He gave a tired nod.

I covered him with a blanket.

“Sleep here. I’ll move you when you wake.”

“Stay?”

“I need five minutes downstairs.”

His fingers tightened.

I remembered the morning.

“I’m going to the office,” I said. “Owen is in the north bay. Marlowe is beside you. I will come back before the next medication alarm.”

Noah opened his eye enough to focus on me.

“You’ll whistle?”

“Yes.”

He released my wrist.

I kissed his forehead.

At the stairwell, I gave the signal.

Two short notes.

One long.

Noah’s mouth curved without his eye opening.

His answer was a breath too soft to form a whistle.

“I’m here.”

I went downstairs.

Caleb waited in my office beside a stack of unpaid invoices and a box of relay assemblies from Harbor Supply.

“You got them.”

“Ben agreed to thirty days.”

“On whose account?”

“The yard’s.”